If you've used Alsa, the big problem is that even when removed, a lot of stuff has been built against it (gnome-libs, kde-libs, esound, etc). I've spent the best part of a day grepping a partition to find out which libraries were linked to libasound.la (alsa) and recompiling after unmerging Alsa. Finally, I was able to use the native kernel modules *successfully* with all my apps.

Btw, if you are using Alsa, merge alsamixer, and use the alsamixer utility from a terminal to get the volume up on the rear speakers.

Also, Xine should work without OSS /or/ Alsa. I believe you need to change a few settings in the options screen. With regards to your aliases file. If you have the alsa drivers installed, you should be aliasing snd-emu10k1 and not emu10k1. Alsa installs alternative SBLive driver modules you see.